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Report lambasting SAPD has its own problems

The message, at first, seemed clear — the San Antonio Police Department continues to have problems with officer misconduct, accountability and transparency.

When the Austin-based Texas Civil Rights Project announced the release of a report Wednesday purportedly detailing a continued trend of officer police behavior, the non-profit’s director James Harrington, lambasted the department, the city manager’s office, the mayor and city council.

Only Chief William McManus emerged relatively unscathed. His heart was in the right place, Harrington said, but he simply didn’t have the support.

Harrington was joined by local civil rights leaders like Jaime Martinez, founder of the Cesar F. Chavez Legacy and Educational Foundation, the president of the local NAACP and LULAC chapters as well as two members of the chief’s civilian review board, which recommends punishment (or not) for officers.

But even before the hour-long conference was finished, participants were contradicting the overall theme or making factually incorrect statements.

For example, Harrington’s overall review described the department’s problems as systemic and cultural. He said leadership didn’t want to take responsibility for their officers; everyone protected their own.

Later, Dee Villarrubia, a civilian review board member, and Oliver Hill, president of the local NAACP chapter, both said that in their experience, the review board often recommends more lenient punishments for officers who are facing discipline than do a similar review panel made up of officers.

The report includes more than 40 recommendations in its 34 pages (printed on both sides). Many have already been implemented or are in the process of being implemented, such as increased training for supervisors, adding video cameras to patrol vehicles, removing the mention of prosecution and aggravated perjury from Internal Affairs materials and increased training for officers on handling victims of sexual assault.

The TCRP report acknowledges that SAPD is moving forward with some of the recommendations already made.

The report provides examples of police misconduct culled from news media reports and cites recommendations from the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, review, plus those from other consultant reviews done in recent years, the Morris and McDaniel and Matrix studies.

Mentioning consultants’ reports paid for and approved by the city seemed to contradict the idea that McManus has no backing. PERF alone cost $250,000 and a three-year accreditation process not mentioned in Harrington’s report cost about $230,000.

The city was confused by the press conference. No one seemed aware the Texas Civil Rights Project’s review was underway — not the mayor’s office, not Assistant City Manager Erik Walsh and not McManus.

After getting calls from reporters, McManus and city officials read the report and held their own press conference later that day.

“What was in (the report) was just a rehash,” McManus said. “These are old practices the police used to have and a lot of the points are simply factually incorrect.”

McManus said the department strives for improvement every day and said the community concerns were taken seriously. He said it was “absolutely not true” that internal affairs wouldn’t accept complaints from undocumented complainants.

The catalyst for the report was an encounter that Harrington’s son, an attorney specializing in domestic violence, had with former San Antonio police officer Craig Nash, who is now serving a year in prison for official oppression. Nash took a plea deal in January following his arrest last year in which he was accused of raping a transgendered woman while on patrol.

Nash’s behavior toward his son was rude and threatening, Harrington said. If the city had taken his complaints seriously then Nash wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sexually assault anyone, he said.

Harrington had filed a complaint with Internal Affairs and it was found not to reach the seriousness required for punishment. Harrington’s organization also has two federal lawsuits pending against the city. He said these don’t create a conflict of interest in producing a critique of the department, considering he’s one of the only civil rights attorneys in the area.

He said the non-profit group had received a “large number” of complaints about SAPD. He couldn’t give a total. The report said “most criminal defense lawyers” in San Antonio believe the IA complaint process is a waste of time. When asked how many such lawyers were polled, Harrington didn’t know.

He also couldn’t say how many community members filled out surveys or were spoken to for the report.

It wasn’t, he said, “a scientific, sociological” in-depth review.

In 2010, SAPD IA handled 313 citizen-generated complaints, the report said. A low number that signified “intimidation” on the part of the unit, it said. The report compared that number to what TCRP said was 753 citizen-filed complaints against Austin PD. However, the Austin number was actually the total number of complaints filed internally and externally, meaning by citizens and other officers, according to the Office of the Police Monitor in Austin. The OPM is a civilian board designed to receive complaints separately from the department.

In comparing the same citizen generated numbers, the Austin OPM reported a total of 526 citizen complaints with 89 of those classified as “formal,” which are considered more serious offenses. The 313 SAPD citizen complaints included 165 “formal” and 148 were considered less serious, according to the TCRP and the SAPD IA 2010 annual report.

The director of the OPM said in the report that the number “alarming” because it was so low compared to the population.

Even comments like “citizens shouldn’t have to go to the police department to file IA complaints” marred the report’s credibility, since the IA office is not at department headquarters, but in leased office space in a private building.

Not to say the report was completely off-base, said Lynn Blanco with the Rape Crisis Center. The center participated in interviews for the report and the names of those who spoke with the Civil Rights Project are listed.

“We’re victims’ advocates. We are always going to think that more can be done for the victims,” Blanco said.

Increased communication among all city departments and non-profits plus victim advocates organization and the community was needed, she said. But Blanco added she was concerned that the city was not made aware of the report.

She said she hoped the negativity accompanying the report’s release doesn’t affect the channels of communication that have already been fostered between the center and the department.

Officers have to balance the need to “get the bad guys” along with the need to be sensitive to victims and deal with any trauma they themselves might endure.

The report slammed the department on mental health support for officers, but McManus cited counter-examples: peer counseling, employee assistance and therapists that are available.

In the end, Harrington said he stood by the report. When told McManus said he had as much support as needed from the city, Harrington replied, “Well, what else could he say?”

Asked if he thought the chief was lying to the media, he replied, “No, of course I’m not saying that.”

When first posted, this blog originally contained an error misstating the first name of Dee Villarrubia. The blog was also updated with a more accurate explanation of the citizen-initiated complaints.